How An Old Typewriter Makes A Great Racing Penalty; Also Check Out Some Great Bonkers Lemons Cars

I’m pretty damn lucky in many areas of my life: I have relatively easy and uncomplicated access to Nathan’s hot dogs (reach out for sponsorship opportunities, Nathan’s, it’ll be worth it), I have a lovely family, the considerable status that comes with (currently non-running) Changli ownership, I just repaired the cassette drive for my Commodore PET, and so far I have yet to be accused of or even remotely linked to the practice of slaughtering of horses for human consumption. I’m a lucky guy! And I’d add to that the fact that every now and then I get to judge a 24 Hours of Lemons race.

Yes, the 24 Hours of Lemons! For an incredible 20 years now, people with $500 to blow on some shitbox and a nearly-clinical lack of good sense have been able to enjoy some genuine wheel-to-wheel track racing along with a good helping of stupidity, which is the bit that I occasionally help provide.

As you may recall, I was just a judge at the race at Carolina Motorsports Park, where I excitedly and triumphantly drove my Citroën 2CV the three-or-so hours from my house to the track. I was delighted I made it for many reasons, not the least of which was the chance to be surrounded by all the usual Lemons lunacy, so let’s take a look at some of what was going on.

First, let’s get a little look at some of the cars that showed up for the race (there were 96 teams total!). Here some of them are, getting ready to run some practice laps before the main event:

 

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As you can see, there’s a lot of fantastic cars there; the Toyota Yaris dressed up like Gary the snail from the Spongebob Squarepants series of operettas was especially popular among the kids who showed up to spectate and, perhaps illegally, race.

Before I get into showing some automotive highlights of the event, it’s worth noting that I was there to judge. That means when drivers got black flag-able penalties, they were sent to my fellow judges and me to get stern talkings-to, and, after three black flags, penalties.

Stupid, time-wasting penalties, ideally. Penalties like one of my favorites, the Typewritten Letter of Apology one, where I drag this archaic manual typewriter to the track and then make misbehaving racers type, laboriously, sincere letters of apology to the race officials begging forgiveness for the foolish things they’ve done:

 

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I’d like to not that this driver was, compared to my advanced age, a kid, and had never really encountered a manual typewriter before. He adapted shockingly quickly, dramatically increasing his typing speed after just a few paragraphs in.

Another fun penalty is the Bob Ross penalty, where we make errant drivers paint landscapes on their car; I modified it this time to be more of an Art Forgery penalty, making drivers attempt to duplicate this lovely drawing of a Firebird and Monte Carlo some participants found in a junkyard, under a tire. This artwork:

…and here’s the erstwhile artist making his forgery attempt:

The result was, let’s say, unconvincing. The style was more like what Pissaro would have painted, had he painted almost immediately after being hit square in the face with a 2×4, then force-imbibed about three liters of vermouth.

I also did a penalty where I made a team run 120V through a pickle to make it glow (it actually works!) but I don’t have the video of that just yet. I’m sure there will be a video on the Lemons site soon, though.

Let’s look at some cars!

I’ll start with one of my favorites: this cut-down Toyota Previa, with its mid-mounted inline-four replaced with an absurdly large Chevy V8. I don’t think this did especially well at the race, but it was impressive as hell, in a technically absurd way.

Look how well they crammed this thing in there! And the size of those hoses!

Another treat was this AMC Gremlin, also now with V8 power and, more importantly, what appears to be genuine Muppet fur. I think it’s supposed to be the Lorax, but it feels Muppety to me. It rained for a while and boy does that fur get gross in the rain.

Here;s another look at Gary the snail. This Yaris was quick on the track! I think it came pretty close to winning class C? I was impressed. It raced clean and stayed on the track pretty much the whole time.

This little Plymouth Horizon was one of my favorite cars at the race; it was such a clean and straight little car, and I just hadn’t seen a running Horizon in, what, decades? Also, I loved this detail about the rear wing; can you tell what it is?

That wing was once the top of the dashboard! You can see the defogger outlets!

This Thunderbird was an ex-grandma car. It had a good, clean race, grandma would be proud.

Look at this early ’80s Celica! I always liked these, with their pop-forward headlights, thankfully intact here. Also, it looks a bit like this one may have an inch or so of lift? That’s an interesting choice.

There were a couple of cars that had that sort of Sharpie-drawn aesthetic for their livery. The look on this Honda I think worked quite well.

I sent this one to David, knowing his love of XJ Cherokees. This one is even a rare two-door Cherokee, and it performed quite well out there on the track, only coming into the penalty area after its power steering pump puked its guts out and made the Jeep hard to control.

This Chrysler Crossfire looked great, and their team really brought it when it came to theme, with silver clad people dancing to what seemed to be loud AI-generated disco music with lyrics about bribing Lemons Judges, one of the only applications of AI I can easily defend.

Oh, look at the stunning 1970 Mustang one of my co-judges brought. This thing was lovely, and I really appreciate the wheel choice there.

Oh look at that. A cock pic.

I really appreciate the painted-on headlamps that this team added to their Miata. Painting lights is not easy! It’s a complex interplay of light and dark, and I think the artist did a fantastic job here.

Oh, speaking of paint, my stencil actually seemed to work okay! It’s still in the big bin of judge stuff, so maybe it’ll show up at another race?

There’s so many more teams worthy of mentioning, but I’ll have to stop here for the moment.

Just take this as a reminder that the 24 Hours of Lemons is a truly wonderful institution, and if you ever get the opportunity to race or, even better, start a team of your own, take that opportunity. It’s worth it, no question.

And if I’m a judge at a race you show up at, I promise to make you do something stupid.